Archive for November, 2009

There was a good article on cracked.com, entitled The World of Tomorrow (If the Internet Disappeared Today) which asked how would people cope and the author asked people to PhotoShop what life would be like.

Now this is really interesting because not only are humans as a society addicted to the internet, but it is also the foundation of our personal and business lives.  On so many levels it provides us the business productivity, personal flexibility and freedom that we are nearly completely dependent and probably would be troubled to do without.  The real issue is the impact on e-commerce and our interconnected economies which without too much thought could be in the short term cataclysmic if the internet disappearing was sudden.  In short, I can only imagine this would have the impact of dropping a large bomb or attack during a global war crippling business and society.

I have often debated with friends about the idea of whether individuals will pay for web content and that it is in the minority of folks who would pay for web based content.   I first used myself as an example and I am very discerning about what I might pay for on the web and that extends to my iPhone which has a myriad of free applications only downloaded.  I also think that this is part of the “open frontier” or “freebies” mindset or culture that is ascribed to the web where everything out there should be free and many of us will only click on the content that is free.

Well there is a Forrester survey published on Read Write Web.com, where it states that 80% of US Consumers won’t pay for online content.  That number doesn’t surprise me, because those users would consider paying for subscription based content.

You can check out the full article at

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/80_of_us_consumers_wont_pay_for_online_content.php

The following post “Legal Implications of Cloud Computing — Part One (the Basics and Framing the Issues)“ is from David Navetta and originally appeared in Information Law Group on August 18, 2009.

I am one of the original Blackberry users who have used more than a half dozen different Blackberry’s model over the years.  When I was introduced to the Blackberry, I was the corporate America business leader who knew the product was a godsend to productivity, flexibility, and freedom.  And it was!  That was a long time ago when the Blackberry was the beacon of light and gold standard in the PDA world.

About a year and a half ago, I went through a Blackberry trauma, when my employer, Hewlett Packard, turned off the internal Blackberry email server and required that we all carry our own product (Ipaq).  While this makes sense from a company perspective, because we should be eating as well as selling our own dog food, it was traumatic like being thrown from a cocoon because the iPaq is a PC, but didn’t have the creature and productivity comforts of a Blackberry.  I am a team player, so I tried to make it work, over time I realized that I couldn’t because the products are apples and oranges.  It was never the same experience.  It took leaving corporate America and now having to worry about firewall’s and corporate email to free me from the “real man” Blackberry thought process to consider the iPhone.

Flash forward to four months ago, I had been learning more and more about the simplicity of the iPhone, it’s productivity, the 85,000 applications, and most importantly the seamless  compatibility with office for importing contacts and my calender.  Oh yeah, I can now consolidate my iPod into a single device with my phone. I was almost there for giving it a try, but it was when I saw that I could get an refurbished  iPhone 8G for $49 the same price as a similarly equipped Blackberry,  where I decided to get an iPhone.

It has been five months and I have three letters for you OMG!  All I can say to use a quote, where once I was blind, now I can see.  The real hook for me is the real world utility of the free applications that I have on my iPhone, not to mention the customized applets that simplify everything.  The thing that blows me away is that I know that I am only scratching the surface for the possibilities for this device.   In surfing the web, I came across this great article, entitled Deathmatch: BlackBerry versus iPhone It’s time for us to bury the BlackBerry and move on to modern mobile — even for email.  Check it out.

At a networking session, the topic of cloud computing came up in conversation and I realized that beyond a couple of sentences there wasn’t a strong understanding of it from my technology colleagues.  In the spirit of that, I am posting a management briefing paper that I wrote on Cloud Computing in August 2008 while I was completing my Executive MBA at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, Georgia.